I was just thinking about this too and my thoughts were: Sheary/Eichel/Thompson -- Skinner/Mittelstadt/Okposo -- Smith/Rodrigues/Reinhart -- Girgensons/Larsson/Pominville. Regardless of what we think about a player here or a player there; we can mostly agree that Skinner/Eichel/Reinhart, while formidable, does not need to be a top line and spreading the wealth and balancing the lines will be better for this teams chances of making a a push for the playoffs this year.

I think playing with Larsson and girgensons will help okposo find his game and keep him playing physical.

I like giving mittelstadt 2 shooters.

Reinhart elevates eichels game almost as much as eichel elevates his.

You can't put mitts and Thompson together. I saw somewhere there CF% together was like 38% which is historically bad. They both might have a ton of offensive upside but are historically bad 5v5 defensively.

I'd flip Reinhart and Thompson. Reinhart can cover up for some of Mitts defensive deficiencies

I agree. Mittelstadt definitely needs offensive skill to play with (Skinner), but let's be real, he (Mitts) gets pushed around a lot and is a defensive liability at times. It would be good to center him on a balanced line. Play him with a high offensive skilled player and also someone who can pick up the slack defensively. Skinner/Mittelstadt/Thompson just isn't defensively responsible enough IMO.

Have they played even 10 minutes together?

According to frozen tools, mittelstadt and Thompson have played together 13.3% of mittelstadt even strength time, with almost all of it (11.2 of 13.3) with Kyle okposo

they have played 92 minutes 5v5. which I know doesn't sound like much...but considering they average around 11 min in ice time a game it actually is a decent sample size. Maybe once both develop their two way games a little more they could play together but this year it looks like a really bad idea.

I switched Thompson and rodrigues